


a star, a star, dancing in the night

by fardareismai



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Based on A Christmas Carol, Character Study, F/F, F/M, If You Squint - Freeform, it was meant to be christmasy, it's not christmasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: The Doctor can see all of time- past, present, and future.  Sometimes he must be made to look.





	a star, a star, dancing in the night

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, y'all. Here's my traditional gift of Christmas Angst.

"Grandfather."

The Doctor opened his eyes slowly, and blinked. He realized, as he became aware of his body, that he was kneeling on a cold, colourless floor, head bent as though in prayer. Where, precisely, he was and why he was on his knees could not penetrate the fog that filled his mind, and did not seem especially important anyway.

"Grandfather."

He looked up. The girl was small and elfin, with large dark eyes and short dark hair and a curious tilt to her head that belied the wisdom in those deep Time Lord eyes. He smiled as the name "Susan" floated through the haze and with it a rush of protective affection.

"Doctor!"

_I want you safe, My Doctor. Protected from the false god._

Her sharp word seemed to jolt everything in his mind back into place and the Doctor found his feet in an instant, Rose's name on his tongue.

She had been there only a moment before- beautiful and terrible and cradled by time as he had so often wished to cradle her.

He had known for a time now that he would rip time itself apart to save her or spare her a moment's unnecessary pain. He hadn't known that she would do the same for him until she had stepped out the TARDIS doors, a goddess of time and space and he her most humble supplicant.

"Rose!" he cried again, turning and staring into the endless nothing that surrounded him, registering none of it. She would burn without him- out of time and out of place. He owed it to her to bear witness, for she wouldn't have been there without him. And yet, she had vanished.

Or he had.

It finally seemed to penetrate his mind that he was not on Station 5 at all, but nowhere in particular, and he turned again, finally, to the only potential source of answers.

She remained where he had last seen her, watching him with a serene expression on her small, beloved face. The Doctor's mind was clear enough now to know, for all the shape before him was that of his dearly-loved and desperately-missed granddaughter, it was not she. Susan was long gone and longer grown, no longer the sweet child he had stolen away so many years ago.

"Where is Rose?" he growled. "Return me to her, now!"

The creature that was not Susan gave him a small, sad smile, as Susan had done so often when he had been shortsighted and proud.

"She's here, Grandfather. We haven't gone anywhere."

She gestured behind him and he spun to see. Sure enough, where a moment ago there had been nothing but the golden-grey womb-like light, Rose now stood, just as she had been only moments before- eyes aglow, tendrils of time wrapping about her like some beautiful but lethal sea creature, determined to drag her away.

The tendrils were still, however, and the Doctor could not hear the thud of her heart, nor the noisy rush of air through her tragically inefficient lungs. He realized that he had, without knowing or intending to do so, stepped into the space between heartbeats.

He had done it before- most recently when Jabe, the Forest of Cheem, had sacrificed herself for all of those ingrates on Platform One. He'd not have bothered, save that Rose was there. Rose, who he had stolen away from hearth and home and who was just now seeing the universe. He would not allow her first sight of the world beyond her front door to be her last and so he had stepped out of time to save the day, just as he had once done so easily,  _before_.

Unlike now, it had been done deliberately, and that timeless, formless place had been empty- almost howlingly so- as it had always been before. Now, however, he had slipped all-unknowing into that nowhere-place and found the past.

"Why?" he asked, unable to take his eyes from Rose and knowing- without knowing quite how- that Susan would understand him.

"Because you must remember, Grandfather. You have forgotten so much, it is time now that you remember."

She took his arm and drew him back into the nothing-light, away from Rose. He kept his eyes on his precious girl until she too far for him to see in that place that wasn't a place.

~?~?~?~?~

The light of the seventeen stars of the Kasterborous system were diffuse and orange, giving the Doctor's skin a jaundiced cast as he stood blinking in the familiar light that he had nevertheless thought never to see again. The ground was rocky and bare- no vermillion grass and silver-leafed trees here. He looked up to see a passel of children standing near the edge of the cliff that seemed to look off into nothing, flanked by a pair of adults with serious expressions and flowing robes.

The Doctor's stomach dropped and he glanced at Susan by his side, watching the proceedings with an incurious expression. "Remember" she had told him. He did remember. He could not forget.

One of the adults reached into the crowd of children and grasped the shoulder of a boy therein, guiding him forward with a near-violent tug.

The Doctor remembered Koshei's sweaty hand slipping from his own. He remembered turning back- there, the dark-haired lad had just done it- to look at his friend one last time. He remembered dark eyes wide in a pale face and a cuff on the back of the head which had forced him to face forward- face the future.

What happened next- gods, he would forget that if he could. They said that only three things could happen when a child was forced to face the pulsing-bright darkness of the Untempered Schism: they were inspired, they went mad, or they turned tail and ran.

Shoved forward, Theta tripped over the hem of the unfamiliar and ill-fitting black robes that had been forced on him that morning. The old professor who stood over him looked displeased and he shrank back from that black look.

He'd known it was coming- they all had- and yet Theta hadn't quite realized that he'd be doing this alone. He hadn't imagined it often, but when he had, he realized that he had imagined Koschei's hand clutched in his, as it was so often. Koshei loved him as no one else on Gallifrey did, and Theta had assumed that they would do this, as they did all other things, together.

Not so. His hand clenched and unclenched, empty at his side as he took the step up to the edge of the cliff and looked down into eternity.

It was beautiful at first. Inspiring, as he had so often heard. Time, in all its glory, laid out before him like the strings of a beautiful harp, his for the plucking. He could make something beautiful and melodious. He could turn the very universe into a concierto of his own devising.

As he stared longer, however, the music in his mind began to change. Time was not beautiful, but powerful and dark, and it burned through him like wildfire, showing him all that was, all that could be, and all that must not be.

_That's what I see all the time, and doesn't it drive you mad?_

_My head… it's killing me._

It would kill him, he could see. A thousand times it would destroy him, body, soul, and two beating hearts. He couldn't stand it- couldn't face it.

He ran, pushing past the old Time Lord in his dark green robes. Past all of his classmates with their expressions of surprise. Past Koshei, who reached out as though to grab him, only to be pulled away. He left them all behind for the first time, there on the edge of eternity.

~?~?~?~?~

The Doctor gasped as they reached the timeless place again, as though he had in fact run again away from the Untempered Schism- down the mountain and into a place where he had hidden all the rest of that day. No one had come looking for him then- not his professors, nor his caretakers. Not even Koschei. He had emerged only when hunger had threatened his sanity, and when he had arrived at the Academy, no one had mentioned the Schism and what had happened that day ever again.

Even so, it had remained forever like a wall between him and the rest of his people. Koschei remained friendly, but the events of that day meant that they never loved each other as much as they had before. Either for that reason or any of a thousand others, love transmuted to hate eventually, and the pair of them became mortal enemies.

But that was  _before_.

"You ran from the Untempered Schism," Susan said, watching him as though she could see these memories dancing across his face, clear as a television screen.

"I wanted to be alone," he said, his voice a low, harsh growl, as though he were a beast.

"Yes," she said, glancing over his shoulder. "You always wanted to be alone."

He turned to follow her gaze and saw, like a cinema screen, his many long lives playing out before them.

He stood serious-faced and straight-backed before the first court which had expelled him from Gallifrey- twenty Time Lords before him, and he standing alone and unafraid before their censure.

He and child Susan standing hand-in-hand. He could see how he'd kept himself distant even from his granddaughter- her wise counsellor and her protector. Never her friend. Never really, he saw, her grandfather.

He saw Jamie and Zoe, to whom he had very nearly allowed himself to grow close, only to have them ripped away. He saw Jo and Sarah Jane, who wanted him so desperately to love and depend on them, only to keep them at arm's length no matter what.

There was the time that Tegan had tried to convince him to join her and Adric for dinner and he had hidden from her beneath the stairs, making the TARDIS send her in circles until she was too hungry to fight any more. She'd always been stubborn, his Tegan.

He saw Peri, who he had nearly killed, and Ace who had wanted a father, and he had used that love to his own ends, as he had with Susan.

Charlie. He wanted to close his eyes the moment he saw her, but she deserved better than that of him. She had loved him, and- all the gods help him, but he had loved her as well. It had seemed so close to perfect for a time, but time in its perfidy had taken her from him, and he'd been more alone than ever before.

And then it was the war. The wedge between him and the other Time Lords hadn't gone anywhere and he was forced among them again, and for all their ceaseless chatter in his mind, he had been as alone among them as ever he had been.

"Don't show me-" he began, but somehow he knew that the roll of time could not be stopped.

The Time Lords were gone, and The Doctor was more alone than he had ever been in all of time.

"But things changed, didn't they?" Susan asked.

There was an odd note in her voice, and the Doctor looked up to find that they were in the basement of Henrick's department store and the Rose he had met the very first time was looking through him at the plastic man who was menacing her just before she turned-tail and ran.

The Doctor could still feel the tingle of memory in his hand from when he had grabbed hers for the first time and said one word to her- just one.

"Run."

Susan turned him around and he found that they were now standing inside the TARDIS, and he could see his own back, and over his shoulder Rose, staring at him with dreams in her eyes.

"...Fill your life with work and food and sleep or you can go… anywhere."

"Is it always this dangerous?"

"Yeah."

He remembered the relish with which he had said that, believing that she was like him- wanting the danger.

"Yeah, I can't…"

She'd given him excuses- her mother. Her pathetic lump of a boyfriend. He hadn't heard them. He'd just smiled and said that he'd see her around, and closed the door in her face, alone again.

It was worse that the Schism. It was worse than Sarah Jane, and Tegan, and even sweet Charlie. It was worse than Susan.

He hadn't realized it then but he did now- looking back on it from the distance of the future he knew that his hearts might well have stopped if not for…

"By the way, did I mention it travels in time?"

~?~?~?~?~

_He blinked and the smell of time was strong in his nose again, and he could taste the salt of Rose's tears on his tongue._

" _It's killing me."_

_He had to save her. He could not witness her death._

" _Come here," he said, reaching for her, drawing the poison from her as he touched her._

~?~?~?~?~

"Doc."

He blinked. There was no fog of amnesia this time. He could still nearly feel the weight of Rose in his arms, but before him was instead the handsome face of Jack Harkness, signature smirk in place.

"You!" the Doctor cried, stumbling back from the man he'd once considered a friend. "You're not-"

"Real," Jack finished. "Or at least, not really real. I think I might be a figment of your imagination."

"Seem a bit cheeky for that," the Doctor said, annoyed.

Jack smiled. "You just have a very accurate imagination." He gestured and suddenly there was an image of Rose before them that the Doctor knew was only from his imagination, not his memory- there was more pink skin on display than he had ever seen in life, and a look on her face of deepest desire that he only wished he'd seen.

The Doctor growled and the imaginary Rose vanished from between them.

"Why?" he asked, for the second time.

Jack was no less cryptic than his granddaughter had been.

"Because you have to know, Doc."

~?~?~?~?~

He and Jack stood before a door in a depressing block of flats that he knew by sight.

"This is Rose's mum's place," he said, glancing at Jack.

The other man smiled and gestured toward it. "Go on in, Doc. They're expecting you."

"Me?" he asked. This couldn't be memory then. Jackie had never expected him before.

"You," Jack confirmed. "Go on, dinner's getting cold."

The Doctor reached a hand out to the knob and stopped, staring at it. It wasn't  _his_ hand, not as he knew it. It was slimmer, the joints more knobbly; there was a light dusting of brown hair across the back, which was all that saved them from being very nearly feminine. And the clothes- his wrist was wrapped not in black leather and wool, but in fine linen and cotton.

He looked at Jack who shook his head and only nodded at the door again. "They're waiting."

The Doctor opened the door of Jackie's flat and was nearly knocked backward by the warmth and sound and colour which seemed to hit him like a solid object.

"Doctor!" he heard, in one cheerful voice.

"Conquering hero!" in another.

"You plum!" said with utmost affection- that was Jackie, he recognized.

The colours and sound seemed to swirl around him- he realized suddenly that it must be Christmas, given the paper crowns and vivid tree in the the corner- but in the center, still and unmoving, was Rose.

Her brown eyes were bright and her face seemed to glow, not as it did on Station 5, with the remnants of deadly time, but with something that the Doctor was almost afraid to name. Something that made her skin bright and her eyes sparkle.

"Don't you see it, Doctor?" Jack asked, quietly.

He could, but he was so afraid.

She stepped forward and took his hands, drawing him in among the loud company there and guiding him to the place that was meant just for him among them.

"This is your place, Doctor," she said softly. "This is where you belong."

He did, he found. He belonged right there at her side where he could rest his arm across the back of her chair and have her lean into him, and he could steal potatoes from her plate once she declared herself stuffed full, and he could place the pink paper crown from the cracker that he and Mickey had pulled together atop her head. Beside her was where she could lean her head on his shoulder, and steal his buttered roll, and offer him a sip from the glass of wine she'd accepted when Jackie had offered. Beside her was where that light that was in her eyes could fall on him and make him very nearly give it a name.

After they ate, Jackie insisted on carols. The Doctor hadn't sung in several bodies, and was a bit surprised to find that he had a rather pleasant tenor. It wouldn't do for the stage, but it wasn't a hardship to listen to either, if the way Rose leaned into his side as he started to sing a low, minor-key carol into her ear was any indication.

As they sang about the love between a creator and creation, the Doctor knew the word that he could not seem to allow to form in his mind, and it thrilled and terrified him.

"Snow!" Mickey called from the door and they all trooped out to look.

"What's next for you?" Rose asked softly as they stood in the cold beside the TARDIS.

"Same old life," he told her.

"Alone?"

"Don't you want to come?" he asked.

"I thought maybe… you wouldn't want me."

"Oh Rose," he said, then hesitated.

"Tell her," Jack urged.

The Doctor clenched his teeth. It wasn't so much that he had forgotten Jack was there, more that he had chosen to ignore the fact in favor of what was pleasant. He often did that where Jack was concerned, choosing instead to focus on things which irritated him less.

"I love you- to come," he stammered, and could kick himself the moment the words were out of his mouth.

"Coward," Jack said. "Every time."

~?~?~?~?~

He could draw it from her with a touch, but he was sick of being a coward where Rose was concerned.

"I think you need a Doctor," he said, and lowered his lips to hers.

Time buzzed across his senses like it hadn't done since that first time standing at the edge of the Untempered Schism. Under that though, was Rose herself- hormone-drenched skin and iron-rich blood and water and salt and a thousand beautiful, unique things. He wanted to savor her, but he felt her lose consciousness and would not kiss her unknowing.

He lowered her gently to the ground and turned to the TARDIS, ready to give her back her heart, but hesitated.

He was a god now, he could do as he pleased. He and Rose could live for eternity, playing the harp of time as he had dreamed he could as a child. The symphony would be that much sweeter for having Rose by his side.

He could see the timeline- he and Rose, great and beautiful as they bent the universe to their whims. Their names would be known in all corners of all galaxies. They would be as eternal as Time itself.

"Follow it farther, Doctor."

He turned toward the voice. The woman who stood before him was no one he'd seen before, and yet he knew her face as surely as he knew his own, for it was his own.

"Follow it to the end," she urged, her amber eyes- eyes that looked so like Rose's he could scarcely believe it- locked on his.

He knew where it ended. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even someone as good-hearted as Rose would be turned and he- he was already a step away from a force of destruction on his best days. They would become gods to be feared, not loved.

"I can't lose her," he said.

"You don't have to," she answered.

All of time was an open book before him. Every timeline laid out like a banquet. Sometimes she died, but often she lived. When she lived, she loved him.

"Every me," he said softly.

"Every single one," she confirmed.

He met her eyes and asked the question that had plagued him all day.

"Why?"

She reached into the timelines before him and drew one. It was disintegrating even as they stood, he having made a different choice. He could see that it was the timeline where Rose Tyler had died, and the Doctor had become a creature as dark and dangerous as any Dalek. Worse- so much worse. He had rampaged through the galaxy on a path of destruction the likes of which no one could heal- the ones who might have done, the Time Lords, were all long gone.

It vanished, thought, for Rose Tyler still lived. She drew another weak line. This one where Rose Tyler and the Doctor forever danced about each other and never said what was in three hearts and proclaimed throughout the universe.

He saw that he lost her and that loss left him dangerous and dark. Not, perhaps, the creature who would tear the universe apart, but one that would try to treat Time itself as a plaything- dangerous and proud and foolish.

Even as he saw it and resolved against it, it began to vanish.

"If I tell her I love her… I could still lose her."

She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. "You could. But the universe will be better for the risk, Doctor."

"Is it real, what I've seen?" he asked.

This time her smile was one he recognized- mischievous and a little bit daft. "I don't know that it matters," she said. "In the end, what happens will happen, whether this was real or not."

He nodded and took a deep breath, ready to give the TARDIS back her life, and lose his own. It had been short, but he thought perhaps, it had been worthwhile.

"Doctor," she said, catching him an instant before he gave it all up. "I think you should know… I loved being you."

The pair of them glanced at Rose, who lay on the floor, peaceful between them.

"You loved her first," she said, not looking up from their precious girl. "And she loved you. I'll always envy you that, Doctor."

He nodded and exhaled, and she vanished, leaving him and Rose alone for his last few moments. He no longer knew for sure what the future held, but he thought that it would be alright in the end as he scooped Rose into his arms and carried her, gentle as a baby bird, into the TARDIS.


End file.
